I'm sitting on the adirondack chair on our front porch. The kids are riding their bikes in the driveway--tricycles, skateboards, two wheelers and training wheels.  Margaret just earned two dollars vacuuming the bus;  Eddie is analyzing the contents of his tackle box; Kaleigh gives me a dirty look when I say, "Oh, finally got up?" My guitars are out to restring and get ready for a couple days worth of singing and storytelling...so finish this coffee and another summer day begins.

    We were approved yesterday as a "fit family" to adopt Phillipe.  It is a tribute to the power of love that I can't imagine giving up on a sick little boy we've never met. We have a long (and expensive) road ahead of us, but it feels like we are moving in the right direction.  Haiti is in a bit of chaos right now--and getting worse.  Phillipe is somewhere in a mountain village. And we are here playing the waiting game.  It might be I need to go down there to make the adoption possible.  The Peace Corp pulled out yesterday and the embassy is pulling all their unessential staff.  It's so different where I am now.  10 years ago, before I had this family, I wouldn't think twice about going anywhere in the world.  I think the word is "insouciance."

Now, I admit I fear for my family--not myself, but for the lives I've "vowed" to hold most dear forever.  It is a quandary.  How far am I willing to go for Phillipe?  Am I willing to put my life in danger for him--yet?  He is alive and knows nothing of our efforts to adopt him.  He only knows that he wants to be adopted; that he trusts Conor and the dreams and hopes he has for him.  I think of all the servicemen and women who have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, ostensibly for us, but who in reality destroyed the fabric of their families. 

    I am angry with Bush for putting men and women with families on a battlefield which seems hopeless and myopic.  It's weird and maybe heartless, but I feel that battle is the domain of the brave and unattached--young men with open and willing minds committed to life as a warrior, not for a father or mother with a more sacred duty at home.  Equality should not be a doorway for  idiocy.  We would all die for our children, but we should never die in spite of them.

    So I wait and pray, e-mail and hound in hopes that it "will all work out."